The present invention relates to a server for transferring a banner advertisement to a plurality of clients linked via a network and a banner advertisement transfer program.
In association with rapid popularization of a computer network represented by the Internet, there is growing interest in the techniques for placing advertisements on the network. As the advertising technique as described above, there has been known a banner advertisement having an entry address for a sponsor's web site and comprising graphic information concerning the sponsor's name or simple copies for the sponsor's products. When a user interested in the banner advertisement clicks thereon, the user can enter the sponsor's web site, where detailed advertisement information is provided to the user. However, a volume of information which can be provided with a banner advertisement is limited by the banner's size, and a frequency of clicking on the banner advertisement by users is generally limited, so that the banner advertisements have has limited popularity.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-194636 discloses, as a device for raising the clicking frequency on a banner advertisement, an invention relating to a method of providing information with a banner advertisement attached thereto wherein whether the information is provided or not is decided according to a result of operations of the banner advertisement by users. In this invention, whether the information is provided or not may be decided based on the frequency management system in which a prespecified point is increased each time an operation of the banner advertisement is detected; the point is reduced according to a period of time when the information is provided to the user; and provision of the information is allowed only when the point is effective (integral value).
The invention relates to a method of providing information with a banner advertisement attached thereto, and with this invention, service or information can not be provided unless a user clicks on a banner advertisement, so that, although it may be useful to some extent to specific viewers who appreciate the service or information, this system is worthless to other users, and can not provide any motivation for raising the clicking frequency.